Expert interviews, brewing insights, and industry trends.
The expert, brewer, and publican who helped to elevate Poland’s true national beer style—porter—dives into the style and its modern evolution from a local perspective, also telling the story behind the special day he conceived nearly a decade ago.
The low-ABV, 100-percent-oak-smoked-wheat-malt beer came back from the dead in the past decade, and the original Grodzisk brewery was similarly revived to focus on the style. In this episode, head brewer Marcin Ostajewski shares history as well as contemporary techniques for making the beer dubbed “Polish champagne.”
These are the conversations that piqued your interest, with highlights from the most-downloaded podcast episodes of the past year.
Brewing in Czechia is steeped in tradition, but there are corners exploring modern craft styles in a very Czech way. In this episode, the brewers of Zichovec in Louny, Czechia, talk through their approach to classic styles with modern flair as well as modern styles with a local touch.
What happens when an experienced brewmaster trades his 100-barrel production plant for a five-barrel kit built into an old farm? Smart but simple efficiency measures, lagers that lean into the farm’s terroir, and a focus on gentle processes that optimize flavor by reducing stress on ingredients, wort, and fermenting beer.
In this final panel discussion recorded at the Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, this past October, Sam Calagione takes the moderator reins as Ethan Frisch of Burlap & Barrel shares insights into spices while Bryan Selders and Mark Safarik of Dogfish Head discuss how they use various spices and ingredients in their boundary-defying beer.
Firestone Walker Brewmaster Matt Brynildson, Omnipollo cofounder Henok Fentie, and FrauGruber cofounder Enzo Frauenschuh explore international approaches to brewing and collaborating on barrel-aged stout, from recipes to aging conditions, barrel choices, adding adjunct ingredients, and more.
After two days of judging for our Best 20 Beers in 2024, the team sat down to discuss their own most enjoyable beers and experiences of the past year—along the way identifying some trends that may offer hope for the next chapter of craft beer’s story.
Hear the stories behind the stories, as Jamie and Joe share your Readers’ Choice picks for favorites of the year, and as they reveal and discuss Craft Beer & Brewing’s Best 20 Beers in 2024.
In this direct fire Q&A with audience questions, recorded live at the Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Delaware, Steve Parker of Fidens, Scott Janish of Sapwood Cellars, and Kelsey McNair of North Park discuss hazy IPA and ways to promote haze stability, balance high finishing gravity, reduce metals in finished beer for longevity, and more.
In this direct-fire Q&A with audience questions, recorded live at our Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Delaware, Khris Johnson of Green Bench, Doug Reiser of Burial, and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River discuss West Coast and American IPA, and the dynamic changes in their recent approaches to brewing it.
With a name like Benchtop, you’d expect experimentation backed by quantitative evaluation, and that’s exactly how founder Eric Tennant approaches brewing passion projects such as foeder lager and barrel-aged barleywine.
From interviews recorded at 3 Sons Lumberjack Day in Dania Beach, Florida, these two brewers from different corners of Europe cover a range of topics, from using a mash press filter for imperial stouts to riffing on grodziskie with mixed cultures and fruit.
Making sweet dessert meads isn’t particularly difficult in and of itself, but building drinkability and balance into big flavors and high finishing gravities poses challenging flavor questions. Florida’s Brewlihan answers them with beautifully structured meads that find balance through the flavor triangle.
Lager is anything but a minimalist pursuit for the head brewer of Philadelphia lager stalwarts Human Robot. Flavor and character are primary focuses, and the brewery achieves those with all the tools in the toolbox—interesting ingredients, customized approaches to decoction and other processes, and a variety of fermentation profiles that maximize different types of expressions.
These leading brewers and great friends from Brooklyn Brewery and Russian River share what they’ve learned from brewing new beers with the African grain fonio.
This Pittsburgh brewery’s initial journeys into fruit had lanes both classic and modern, with mixed-culture foeder creations as well as juicier, acid-forward American fruit beers. Now, however—as the team deepens its repertoire in food and flavor science—Cinderlands is remixing the program with fruited riffs on their most popular and sessionable styles.
The brewmaster and the co-CEO of this Midwestern stalwart respect their brewery’s three and a half decades of tradition—but they also test assumptions while tackling new beers that reflect today’s trends.
This Cleveland brewery takes an intentionally small and sustainable approach to making creatively fulfilling beers, and it all starts with the flexibility of their 10-barrel brewhouse.
Since their start in 2009, Matt Cole and Fat Head’s have cleaned up in the major competitions with their German-style wheat beers, American-style IPAs, and closely related styles. In this episode, Cole pulls back the veil and shares some of the process and ingredient choices that set their beers apart.
As an unabashed lover of hazy IPA, Murphy Johnson doesn’t apologize for focusing a huge portion of BlackStack’s brewing program on the hop-laden crowd pleasers. His latest obsession, meanwhile, is maximizing flavor without breaking the bank, using traditional American hops in some very untraditional ways.
The Twin Cities’ Fair State Brewing Cooperative both heralds the adjunct-driven history of Upper Midwest lager brewing and pushes the craft-beverage conversation forward with an honest approach to hemp-derived THC drinks.
Lager yeast is capable of so much more than many brewers give it credit for, and in this industry spotlight panel discussion brought to you by the yeast experts at Fermentis, Bob Kunz of Highland Park, Urs Wellhoener of Boston Beer, and Grant Lawrence of Fermentis explore ways to heighten expression in cold fermentations.
From Beachwood to Riip and now under his own brand, Ism, Ian McCall has honed his West Coast IPA craft and racked up a bunch of medals along the way. The secret? He’s not afraid of bitterness, as long as it’s properly shaped and timed.